Hi all, I'm the author of this mod and came by to offer my twopenceworth as Petator has raised the issue in my forum thread so I thought I'd return the favour and drop by here.
I would obviously like people to be able to use the mod, I wrote it to make people's lives easier when using the myriad commands which are a necessity when playing on servers running a multitude of plugins, I did not write it to provide people with tools to cheat or grief, although I understand the concerns that the capabilities of the mod may raise.
I'm posting here because Petator has asked that I create a "cut down" version of the mod which would satisfy the moderators and administrators on the server that the mod is safe to approve. Whilst this is relatively straightforward for me to implement in the short term, I'd obviously like to avoid maintaining two separate builds of the mod going forward for numerous reasons, and it could become problematic to sustain as I add more advanced features over time.
So I've come to put a point to the moderators that has been somewhat illuminated by earlier posts in this thread which mention the possible abuse of other tools which are less overt.
I've been gaming for a very long time, and one thing that's become clearer as time passes is that cheating and exploiting are not a function of having the tools at one's disposal, they are a function of people who want to cheat, exploit and grief. People who have this mentality will always find a way of achieving their nefarious goals irrespective of rules and bans which would naturally preclude them from doing so. Powerful tools like programmable keyboards and mouses, external tools like AutoHotKey and the like, and client mods like my own represent a powerful toolkit for those players who can harness them to enhance and improve their game experience and for moderators and admins who can use them to improve the game experience of others. Just because those tools can be used by the unscrupulous to cheat is not a reason to ban the tools themselves: it would be like banning hammers because people can use them to harm others - those intent on harm would just use another blunt instrument, meanwhile legitimate builders are stuck knocking in nails with the sole of their shoe.
In a nutshell, cheaters cheat, legitimate players play legitimately; cheaters by definition will flout the rules and eventually get themselves banned - penalising players who could use a tool to improve their game experience will not prevent that.
If you don't care about any of this and still want to ban my mod, but would be happy with a "lite" version then I'll happily oblige and create one for you. I would however appreciate it if you'd consider allowing your users to benefit from the features that I have spent a great deal of time creating to make everyone's game experience a little better, without missing out on some of the truly useful features simply because some would choose to abuse them.
If this all sounds like I'm trying to get out of doing some work, please don't think that, nothing is further from the truth: I'm a big supporter of any type of gaming community and would happily create the special version for you if I truly thought it would solve the problem. However I honestly believe that it wouldn't achieve the desired result, otherwise I wouldn't have spent 20 minutes writing all of this.
Feel free to disregard any or all of the above, but I thought I'd at least put the point to you guys.
Happy Minecrafting,
Mumfrey